Food Waste Funder Circle Member Spotlight - Tamar Honig
Originally Published By: The Food Waste Funder Circle Team
Dear Food Waste Funder Circle Members:
We're excited to share the August installment of our Member Spotlight Series, our monthly email highlighting a Food Waste Funder Circle (FWFC) member – including any asks or offers that they have for the rest of the group. The goal of the Member Spotlight Series is to give FWFC members a glimpse into the inspiring work that others in your community are doing and to connect members who could potentially benefit from a collaboration.
This month, we sat down with Tamar Honig, Investment Associate at Align Impact.
If you would like to connect with someone from the Align Impact team, please reach out to us at fundercircle@refed.org for an introduction.
Best,
The Food Waste Funder Circle Team
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed below belong to the author and not to Align Impact. None of the information therein should be construed as investment advice.
Organization Overview:
Align Impact is an RIA (registered investment advisor) focused on connecting our clients with investment opportunities across social and environmental impact categories like sustainable food and agriculture, clean energy and resource efficiency, financial inclusion, affordable housing, and racial and gender equity. We work across asset classes and geographies, seeking to help our clients construct diversified portfolios with impact at their core.
Tamar Honig (She/Hers)
Investment Associate
Part of the reason why the FWFC exists is to connect individuals in the network who are passionate about this work with each other. Could you share a little bit about your journey into the food/food waste/climate world?
My mother, who is from the Netherlands, was stunned at the wastefulness she observed when she moved to the U.S. She grew up with parents who lived through World War II, who faced hunger and had no choice but to exercise extreme caution in their food rationing for many years. They instilled in her, and she in turn taught my siblings and me, a conscientiousness for what you have and for finishing what you put on your plate.
In my professional life, before Align, I lived and worked in Mexico City — first with Ashoka, a global network of social entrepreneurs, and then with Kiva, a peer-to-peer microfinance platform. In these roles, I traveled around Mexico and Central America and met several inspiring entrepreneurs dedicated to revitalizing agricultural lands and empowering those working the lands. One of the microfinance partners I worked on-site with in Nicaragua provided loans to farmers in remote rural areas, which gave me an up-close-and-personal window into the fragility of these important livelihoods and their deep reliance on the health of the land.
At Align, I’ve explored not just the social dimensions but also the climate-related implications of food and agriculture. I’ve learned that the food and agriculture industry can be both the villain and the hero: the former due to the industry’s hefty contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions, and the latter thanks to farmland’s potential to capture carbon and support a healthier atmosphere when soil and plants are properly nurtured to do what they do best. I’m especially excited about food waste solutions, because they tackle so many interlocked issues at once: reducing greenhouse gas emissions, saving water and cropland, creating jobs, and recovering meals for those who need them.
Hunger and poverty should not exist in a world where, according to ReFED, a staggering 38% of all food goes unsold or uneaten in the U.S. alone – the equivalent of 149 billion meals annually. Food waste solutions must be scaled to break this cycle, and investors have a crucial role to play in facilitating that scale-up.
Could you please tell us about Align Impact’s investment thesis and how food waste fits into it?
Align Impact identifies and underwrites investment opportunities with social and environmental impact baked into their theses. We drive capital toward those opportunities through our clients, comprising high-net-wealth individuals, family offices, foundations, and wealth management firms. Our investment recommendations span private market funds and companies, public markets, and catalytic capital opportunities.
Climate change is one of the key issues our clients come to us wanting to tackle with their investment dollars. They’ll often share an initial vision of the types of opportunities they’re interested in — renewable energy infrastructure, electrified transport, climate justice, etc. It’s our job to listen to those visions while also educating clients on additional strategies that may help them achieve their impact goals. For example, some clients may come to us unaware of the connection between food waste and climate change. Through our due diligence reports and client communications, we illuminate these connections and inspire clients to put their dollars to work across the full spectrum of pathways required to solve climate change.
Are there one or two organizations from your portfolio that you would like to tell us and the other FWFC members about?
Through the funds on our platform, we have exposure to a number of companies tackling food waste from farm to fork – that is, across the agrifood value chain that begins at the farm gate and ends with consumers. These include Apeel, which has created a plant-based, edible coating for fresh food that extends shelf life by two times on average, and Infarm, which has pioneered an on-demand farming service to help cities become self-sufficient in their food production while eliminating waste and reducing other negative planetary impacts associated with food systems.
Other food waste warriors include Clean Crop Technologies, offering next generation solutions to prevent crop loss and improve food safety, and Swarm Engineering, a Software-as-a-Service platform that reduces waste by optimizing key processes such as load planning, inbound and outbound logistics, supply/demand planning, yield maximization, and pricing.
What trends in the food/food waste/climate space are you seeing that you think will gain traction in the next five years?
I think circular economy solutions broadly will gain traction, as these make sense not only environmentally and morally, but economically as well. Why waste resources that could be reused as valuable inputs? One company that illustrates this principle well is HomeBiogas, which creates modular household anaerobic digester units that convert household food and yard waste into renewable energy and liquid fertilizer.
I also see growing traction for solutions that gamify or in some way make rescuing food waste fun. I love getting my surprise bags from Too Good To Go, an app that lets users explore stores and restaurants in their local area and save surplus food from going to waste. Users get good food for a fraction of the original price, participating businesses turn unsold food into extra revenue, and the planet benefits from the prevented waste. It’s a win-win-win.
To facilitate the food and agriculture industry’s transition to more regenerative systems, we will also need to see farmers centered in solutions design and appropriately incentivized. I think there will be an investment uptick in platforms that help farmers finance the transition to regenerative practices as well as those that unlock additional revenue from carbon credit marketplaces. Indigo Ag, for example, calculates the carbon credits produced by a particular farm, validates the findings with a verifier, and submits the results to a carbon registry, where corporations can purchase credits. At least 75% of the average credit price is delivered directly to the farmer. By enabling farmers to earn income from carbon credits, Indigo Ag incentives farmers to adopt sustainable practices like adding cover crops, reducing tillage, and rotating crop types.
What excites you about being a member of the FWFC?
I’m excited to have my eyes opened to the full range of food waste fighting investment opportunities. This is a burgeoning space and a critical piece in solving the climate change puzzle. I appreciate receiving the FWFC’s monthly deal flow reports for both investment opportunities and philanthropic funding opportunities to allow investors to learn about and connect with organizations seeking support from across the capital stack. The diversity of organizations featured in these reports energizes me, as I know each one represents a team that has refused to give up hope or accept the status quo and instead committed themselves to some aspect of food waste prevention. From "Optimizing the Harvest" to "Maximizing Product Utilization" to "Strengthening Food Rescue" and beyond, there is much to be done, and the FWFC is an excellent bridge between those who are doing the work and those who can fund them.